20 Years
by vixbrad
Summary: My first ever Stendan Story. "It's been a long time"


Ste.

It's freezing, it's the end of March but spring is nowhere to be seen, snow is falling and I blow into my hands in a desperate attempt to warm them up. I should have stayed in the car, but I was too anxious to sit, I needed to be moving around. Looking around I see I'm not alone, there is an older couple to my left and on my right is a young woman with a pushchair with a young child wrapped up against the cold. The woman spots me looking and throws me a flirty glance; I smile back and look away. I wonder who the other people are waiting for and if those people will be happy to see them. I wonder if the person I'm waiting for will be happy to see me. I hear an alarm sound and the large metal gates in front of me start to open slowly and I'm taken back to a time when I never imagined seeing these gates. Never mind seeing them open.

Our last day together, our last moment replayed itself over and over in my mind. I never got over the loss; I never got over the despair of knowing I wasn't ever going to see him again. I never got over my heartache.

I'd tried. God I'd tried. But not straight away. It had taken a long time, years for needs to resurface. And when they did, I shamefully, drunkenly slept my way through too many men to count. I never stayed at their houses. They were never invited to mine. It was mostly alley way encounters, Bathroom encounters, and every one of them left me feeling more alone, more desperate for him. So eventually, even those stopped, none of them were what I really wanted, so why bother trying? I never tried to date, not even after Amy begged to at least try, I just couldn't. I didn't want anyone else, I knew I never would.

After a while, I moved in with Amy and the kids, I couldn't face living in the flat all on my own, it was too hard, it held too many memories, so I packed my things up and left. Packing his things was hard too, I hadn't even realised how much of his life he had actually brought into the little 2 bedroom flat but packing his clothes, his bathroom things, his favourite mug, just made me realise what I had lost and I'd sat amongst the boxes and cried till I didn't think I could cry any more. I missed him so much and I couldn't get to him, couldn't hold him, and couldn't even talk to him. It felt as devastating as if he'd died. Amy had found me on the floor and had helped me to get up, to pick myself up, and had helped me into a taxi, her arm wrapped around my shoulders telling me, promising me that things would get better, that life would get better for me.

I had handed over my share of Carter & Hay to Doug, I didn't want it anymore, and I didn't want anything to do with the village that had given me so much, but had also been the place that I had lost everything. So I stayed away and slowly, with the help of Amy, Leah and Lucas, I started to heal.

I kept in contact with a few people and after a couple of years, Doug even sent me a cheque for my half of the deli, I hadn't been expecting it but Doug insisted on paying me back it was a nice amount and I even started my own little deli with it. I didn't even need to think about a name for it, and once I was in and decorated the sign put up outside and I stood and smiled, "Brady's" was open for business.

I knew it probably sounded a little bit pathetic to hold onto Brendan the way I was doing, but he was my life, he was the only man I ever wanted, and although I had married Doug and had dated others before him, I had never loved anyone as much as I loved Brendan Brady, I never would. So I held onto him, in the only way I knew how. And if that meant naming my Deli, and the small chain of Deli's I opened after that, after him, then I would and I wasn't going to listen to anyone who told me I shouldn't.

My kids grew up, I had amazing memories of them, and they made my life filled with all the happiness I could have asked for, but in the background, of every memory, of every photograph there was a hole, a Brendan shaped hole that made my heart ache with sadness, that made me feel bitter, that made me resent myself for feeling like this, but I couldn't help it, I just ached with that fact that he wasn't there. All the big things he should have been there with me for, birthdays, Christmases, parties, weddings, christenings.

Everything. I wanted him there for all of it. I needed him there for all of it, to kiss me silly tears away when Lucas won his first swimming medal, to laugh with me when he got his first girlfriend, to hold my hand when I cried because my babies were growing up and moving out, to hold me when my baby girl became a mummy herself and made me the proudest Granddad I could have been, I wanted him there to be Granddad Brendan, he should have been there.

And all that time, he was there, in my head, in my heart.

I'd told him on that last day, "Nothings ever going to change, and I'm never going to feel any differently about you" And I'd meant it, I'd been to everything for him, even after he had tried to keep me away, I couldn't, I'd been to his trial, sitting in the back as they listed his crimes, as they told him he was guilty as they sentenced him to 25 years for the Murder of his Dad, they hadn't been able to prove the other murders, even though he had said he'd done them, that he had killed those other people, he wasn't tried for them.

I'd tried to visit, he'd never let me, not once. I had all my letters returned unread by him, I knew what he was doing, I knew he was trying to give me my life back, but how could he do that when he was my life? So I kept trying, and trying and trying, and I never heard a thing.

Until 6 months ago.

I hadn't heard anything from Brendan of course, but one morning my mobile rang, I didn't recognise the number and I don't usually answer it but I did this one time and the voice on the other end had me falling to the floor ungracefully.

Hearing Cheryl's voice after all these years brought back a million memories, most of them good but one of them bad, the only bad memory was of her telling me that she had in fact killed Seamus, I had forgiven her at the time, but over the years, hearing her talk about marriage and children when it should have been me and Brendan doing it too, well, we lost touch. I had no idea why she was calling me now, after all this time but then she uttered three words to me that left me reeling

"He's getting out"

Three words, three simple words, they weren't as memorable as I love you, they weren't as emotional, but they made my insides turn to jelly and my heart hammer in my chest, just as much as an I Love you would have done, and they were going to change everything my life had become.

So this brings me to now. The end of the phone call was a place, a date and a time, and this is where I find myself, 10:30 am on a cold Friday morning, almost exactly Twenty years to the time since I'd last seen him, and I was standing outside Strangeways prison in Manchester, he'd been so close and yet so far, the large metal gates opened fully and the people who were either side of me walked forwards, three people came through the gate, all of them men, two of them in their early twenties, one of them, the only one I wanted to see, just turned fifty-three, with his hair greying at the temples and his face cleanly shaven, but I would have recognised those eyes, those lips, I recognised everything about Brendan Brady as if I'd just seen him yesterday.

The moment he spotted me he stopped dead, I saw his face flash from disbelief to shock to acceptance and he took one step towards me, I wanted to run into his arms but being a man of forty-three I decided against it and took one step towards him.

We carried on taking small steps, four each till we were standing right in front of each other, I didn't know what to do now he was actually in front of me, I mean I knew I wanted to kiss him, I knew I wanted to wrap my arms around him and never let him go, but this was his choice, this was down to him.

He didn't him take long to make his choice, he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and placed our foreheads together, and then he whispered the one word that I never thought would make me cry

"Steven"

Then he kissed me.

"_I'm never going to feel any differently about you, I promise you ok?"_


End file.
